A Safe Place to Hide
by merlintriss
Summary: All she needs is a safe place to hide, she just needs to survive long enough to make him lose interest, to maybe last the night. Spoilers only up to "the Target," and based entirely in that episode.


For the prompt "Hide"-Challenge 009

Title: A Safe Place To Hide

Author: merlintriss

Pairing/Characters: Echo, Richard (The Target)

Rating: T

Warnings: Very minor cursing. Hunting humans. So basically, nothing.

Spoilers: Up until The Target. Which, if I remember correctly, is episode three. So not much as far as spoilers.

Disclaimer: All belongs to Joss Whedon.

Word Count: 873

Summary: All she needs is a safe place to hide while, she just needs to survive long enough to make him lose interest, to maybe last the night.

Author's Notes: Challenge 009. First attempt at a challenge fic for this genre.

She ran. It didn't matter where, she just had to get away. She was just a good girl from a small town, just a good girl with a bunch of brothers who thought she was going to a hunting lodge with a really great guy. Because he seemed really great to begin with. Kind of handsome, in that rugged, outdoorsy way, but clean too. Like a outdoorsman who became a city boy. And he was really great in bed.

Really.

But then something went really wrong. And now she had to hide. She had thought he had been joking, when he picked up the bow and said she had to run. Some sort of post-coital game. Some guys got off on shit like that.

The look in his eyes had told her he wasn't joking. And it terrified her. More than that guy that had followed her home in college or the time she'd gotten lost in the supermarket when she was five. Nothing scared her as much as the dead look, followed quickly by _excitement._ He wanted this. For her to run.

In the back of her mind, she registered that this was like some story she'd read in high school. _The Most Dangerous Game_...something like that. She tried to remember if the character she represented had lived. She didn't think so, and if he did, it was probably because he had some super secret ju jistsu training or something like that. She had dropped out of karate in like three years. There were so many better things to be doing. Now though, now she wished that she had stayed in just a little longer, was like a triple black belt. Because for sure she was going to die.

She thought about running to an interstate or a road or something, but she remembered when Richard had driven her here that it had been quite a drive, and that she was probably ten miles into a forest. She didn't even know what forest. She hadn't cared. He was hot, and she was pretty sure they were going to be having really great sex all weekend. And then this happened.

Now she figured it might be a better idea just to hide. To find some place he wouldn't find her and wait him out, hope to run into another hunter or a camper or something. Someone she could trust to keep her safe, because she wasn't sure she was going to be able to tough him out.

He was bigger, for sure. When they had been pressed together, when she hadn't been distracted and he had just been teaching her to use a bow, she had felt his strength. He was built, strong and well-muscled. She...well, she looked down at her body. She had some muscle tone. A little yoga. Some decent eating. She wasn't stick skinny, but compared to his massive form, she felt tiny.

She felt a little like giving up, to hoping that when he caught her it'd all be just some silly game. He didn't really intend on killing her. But then she remembered the look in his eyes and knew that if she stopped running, stopped hiding, she was going to die.

A tree had been wrenched from the ground, and underneath it, almost too small to fit, there was a little hollow between the roots and the tree. It seemed a good enough place to hide, since it felt like she had been running and hiding for the past thirty minutes. She had to get away. But she felt like her feet were made of lead. After all, her time in bed hadn't really been spent sleeping. She curled under the roots of the tree, hoping they provided enough cover for her purposes.

She didn't have to wait long.

"C'mon, I know you're out there. Trying to hide, little girl?" his taunting voice filled the empty wilderness, and she could make him out just beyond the clearing where her tree was. He didn't see her, and she remained as quiet and still as she could.

The silence was broken again, this time by the ringing of a cell phone. It was Swan Lake with electric guitars, and it rang for a moment or so before he pulled it out of his pocket. Frowning, he flipped it open and, checking the nearby trees and missing her, he answered the it.

"'ello." he frowned more, "Yeah, I know. You're calling to remind me of that? I know my side of the bargain Alpha," the last word was said with a great amount of disdain, "And what's with the idiotic code names anyway. It's like some elitist military group instead of one guy hunting a girl. Fine, fine, Alpha." again, the name was said like Richard had a bad taste in his mouth before he hung up the phone and slid it back into his pocket.

"Come here chickadee. I know you're out there somewhere," he started moving again, though this time moving away, bow cocked in the opposite direction, "You can't hide forever."

She may not be able to hide forever, but she was certainly willing to see how long she could hide.


End file.
